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Online Poker Legalization Bill Coming Next Week
GovTechGuy writes "Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) could introduce his bill to legalize online poker as soon as next week. The bill would legalize the game in all 50 states, but sites could only be set up in states where gambling is already legal, so they can be licensed through existing gaming commissions. States could choose to opt-out of the law and ban online poker by referendum or a vote of the state legislature. The bill would also create a federal regulatory body to oversee the game."
I'm going to bet my life savings to call your bluff.
It makes sense. If you can play offline poker in a state, then I see no reason why online poker should be any different. Not to mention, maybe now a lot of the stuff can go from underground to legal, thus enabling the government to take a cut (not that I generally like seeing the government get a cut, but I'd rather them than some illegal casino because at least then the money has a chance of going to something potentially good like NASA).
What are the odds of this passing?
Now that is where the cash is!
or at least add it to the OTB's.
The bill would also create a federal regulatory body to oversee the game.
The beast is hungry for more power!
Fear not. I'm sure they will tack on a last-minute amendment outlawing food banks, or some such.
There is no reasonable reason why it's illegal in any state. Puritan rules are utterly stupid. Along with dumbass blue laws.
Well they are going to play anyway... Might as well tax it.
Or as my uncle once told me 'dont cut uncle sam out of his cut'
For population control purposes.
No No No. Why need to a create a federal regulatory body? For interstate taxing? That is why you are forcing it to be run in a state with a gaming commission. everything else is ok. But get back to me when this is actually close to passing.
This bill would not be necessary if Republicans had not banned it in 2006.
So...better late than never to the logic train.
194 Democrats in the house voted for it, and 1 voted against. In the senate, the only Democrat who did not vote for it was Akaka, from Hawaii, who did not cast a vote.
But, I know, it's easier to blame Republicans than actually do any research.
That makes sense.
The bill would also create a federal regulatory body to oversee the game
Ahhh... well, I'm pretty sure there are not enough regulatory bodies out there already... I wonder, has anyone actually counted the number of federal regulatory bodies / organizations / commissions / etc... and how many people work there? And how much it costs? Do we need 128 bit arithmetic for that?
Oh, and, BTW, how many of those have usefulness different than zero?
unless the random function is a separate signed binary from some regulatory authority that absolutely guarantees it is authentic and not tampered with, no one in their right mind should go near it.
Actually I'd prefer some sort of ticket system like kerberos that also proves that not only was the signed random function used to generate the hand, that that randomness produced the current "transaction" ( card ) and was not distrubed "in transit" from the random function to your "hand"
and the audit of that should also be signed and sent to a 3rd party.
The entire audit of all players should be public after the game with all signatures provided so they can be validated by the user and by the governing authority.
But of COURSE none of that will be in the bill.
That is one heck of a "But, Clinton". Just because the idiots from the other side of the isle voted for it does not change he stupidity of banning it in the first place.
Las Vegas et al were the ones who lobbied hard to ban online gambling because it competed with their profits. Now that they see how much money could be made from such gambling arenas, they're lobbying hard to re-legalize it but in such a way that ensures that they're the only game in town.
It's the U.S.'s pro govt imposed monopolist mentality all over again.
I have no problem with taxes on morons. It adds an evolutionary pressure for the population to get smarter.
Only if people with a higher tax burden are less likely to successfully reproduce, which I find implausible.
Le français vous intéresse?
This is not regulation we need. That is something players can get by spending their dollars at an establishment that does that. If anything strong labeling regulation is needed, so players can determine what sort of system they are playing against. More information helps markets be more efficient. Which is why so many big companies are against labeling laws more than regulation they can easily corrupt.
I don't think you need to be a rocket scientist to know that gambling sites take in more money than they give out. While of course people wouldn't mind getting rich, I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding that so many do it for the outcome. Many, if not most people are hooked on the gambling itself, seeing the lights spin, the excitement of the dealer flipping the cards, your heart racing as you wonder if they'll call your bluff or not.
One of my former colleagues is a pretty serious snowboarder, knows a lot of people that went on to do it professionally and many of them play poker for quite serious amounts of money - even the ones that are just breaking even or less. Why? Because of the adrenaline rush, it's exactly the same people that need to do a 720 double backflip to get their kicks. The only time I've done anything similar is when I bought my apartment, thousands of dollars flying in bidding rounds. Honestly I'm not made to throw that kind of money around, but I can see the rush as my heart was pounding.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Is that OK? Has anyone legalised it yet? It's really important that I know if Senator John Johnson III has passed a bill saying that it's no longer illegal for me to scratch my ass.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This is a cleverly concealed tax for people who are bad at math.
According to the Feds, online gambling is the crème de la crème of money laundering methods. Does this law mean that the US government is prepared to tolerate money laundering so long as they get a cut?
This will likely pass because it cuts out the existing poker sites by requiring the limitation to states allowing gambling. In other words, the idiots who didn't come up with this are given time to build their "legal" options and the upstart innovators are basically blocked.
This law makes it legal everywhere... except where state legislatures or voters vote to make it illegal. So all of the states that already ban it will vote to ban it (or maybe they'll just argue that having already banned it they have already made the vote and don't need another), and all of those that allow it will continue to allow it. Net effect, zero.
I don't really care about on-line gambling one way or another, but it seems silly to waste time and effort on a law that will ultimately change nothing. I suspect that the Representative's intent was to legalize it everywhere, period, using the fact that federal law overrides state laws, but had to insert the opt-out provision as a compromise to mollify opponents, but the net effect is to make the bill pointless.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Statistics show this to be the opposite. People with lower income (and thus having a lower tax burden) tend to reproduce more than those more well off. Moreover, people with a lower income are more likely to gamble away what little they have (high rollers are a minority). Online poker has lower buy-ins than brick and mortar card rooms, making it even more likely that lower income populations will play. I am a firm believer in personal responsibility, so I don't believe that online poker should be banned for this reason; however, it should be regulated to prevent money from funneling to unsavory endeavors (terrorism, human trafficking, etc.)
Jesus loves me, he loves me a bunch, because he always puts Jiffy in my lunch.
Why do we need YET ANOTHER big government agency to regulate something that has been completely self-regulated, and successfully so, up until now?
Oh that's right. The big government wants its rake, too.
There really isn't an incentive for the sites to rig the games but there is an incentive for them to have fair games. That's why sites have their RNG's independently audited.
Unlike other casino games, in poker you're playing against other players, not against the house. The house makes money buy taking a small portion of the pot or tournament buy-in.
Poker is not gambling. It's a game of skill as much as golf, bowling, or any other individual sport. Why this is not obvious to everyone I do not understand.
Oddly enough, lower income people are also very religious, which tends to tell people to "keep the baby" and use "natural berth control" methods. They also advocate for large families
They are also generally republican and tend to believe in the American dream.
So see... it is our culture not the individuals state of well being that causes people to gamble.
You're looking at it backwards. The reason so many gambling sites are used for money laundering is because it's illegal. The old meme of "When X is outlawed, only outlaws will do X" applies here.
You had a big example of that, during the prohibition.
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Poker is not gambling. It's a game of skill as much as golf, bowling, or any other individual sport. Why this is not obvious to everyone I do not understand.
That must be quite a "skill" you've got there to know what card is coming next from the shuffled deck. Either that, or your ass is cheating...
There really isn't an incentive for the sites to rig the games ...
that is, no incentive other than the trivially obvious one, of making huge piles of money the easy way, by cheating their customers. But we all know that a business wouldn't cheat their customers, even if it's easy. Businesses always think of the long term, always, without exception. Of course they do.
(Or was that original statement intended to be sarcastic, and I missed it? in that case, whoosh!)
The skill is in knowing the probabilities and reading your opponents. Lose small pots, win big ones.
TODO: Something witty here...
Surely a little math would proove you would have made more $$ and have a better free life outside usa.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
If you do not understand, then you may not be in the best position to explain to those who believe it is, at least predominantly, a game of chance.
Is there skill involved? Of course. You need to be able to weigh your odds on a non-emotional level. But that goes along with learning what a straight is and whether or not it beats a full house. That's not particularly 'skill'. The skill element comes from gaming your co-players. Reading their tells, faking your own, bluffing, etc. However, your actions therein may influence the game - then again, it may not. Thus: chance.
The point at which things become rather difficult is when proponents of "poker isn't gambling" point to the professional poker players who, when pitted against a random bunch of other poker players, tend to win far more often than a random selection would dictate. Thus their skill at influencing the game outweighs the chances.
But this is only against such a random selection of other poker players and only when they're human. Pitted against a computer, their results suddenly fall well within a bell curve of chance.
Compare this to golf and bowling, which you cited, where you are far more in direct control of how the game is played. Yes, a sudden gust of wind can throw the ball off course (in golf, perhaps in bowling if it's the hurricane season) - but the course you're presented with is known beforehand. It's not a randomly dealt course, and you don't have to read the other player's 'tells', you can see exactly where his ball went.
( Surprisingly, you didn't mention chess; also considered a sport, and also not uncontroversially so. But almost universally considered a game of skill rather than chance. )
So is it skill, or is it chance?
I'd say it's a little of both, with chance being predominant in the game's actual elements, and skill being predominant in its (human) players.
This presents a bit of a problem as the laws currently are sort of black-and-white. It's either a game of chance or a game of skill with nothing in between. So when a bunch of experts from both sides of the fence speak up during the latest debate on this and once again decide that it's more chance than skill, by however narrow a margin, the law says it's a game of chance and all regulations thus apply.
But those same regulations can't exactly be bent to a situation where it would be declared that poker is 55% chance and 45% skill and thus 55% of the regulations apply.
To much chagrin of both poker site operators as those looking to welcome 'taxing' the games played.
In the end, though, a highly skilled poker player can still lose against somebody who never played before and sat down just for kicks. A well-trained marathon runner, however, is not going to lose against a couch potato short of an external influence.
That's why it's not obvious to everyone that poker is not a game of chance, and thus it's not obvious to everyone that playing poker with an ante is not gambling.
You didn't even read the Forbes article, did you?
The poker sites weren't being used for money laundering, they're committing the money laundering in order to get payments to and from their players processed.
As the parent post saidp though, the RNG wouldn't be tampered with - They might tamper with the bids(showing a lower pot than was actually created, keeping the difference), but tampering the RNG wouldn't help unless you had shills playing(which *also* might be possible).
In real life maybe but online? The whole social side of bluffing and such is totally lost online. You might as well hook up a bot to play the odds.
To say that poker is pure skill is simply untrue. A perfect example that comes to mind is Chris Moneymaker winning the 2003 WSOP? You can honestly say, straight faced, that he was the best poker player in that tournament? I didn't think so.
Perhaps you should watch some more poker on TV, or head down to your local card room more often; poker is not all skill. All it takes is a little luck on one or two hands and the tides turn. In that moment when you shoved all in with AK suited, and you get a ridiculous call with 4-3 off, the skill it took to get you to that point is thrown out the window when the flop comes 443.
Furthermore he expects all these firms who may ot conduct any business int he US, US citizens have to call them, are going to have to pay protection money to the organized crime syndicates that control the varied states in which gambling is legal. This would be like a US company having to pay the Russian mob before a Russian citizen can order a widget from the US company. What would happen is if a Russian party did receive goods form the US, they would pay a tarrif on when it entered the country. This is what should happen, use the rules we have. I can tell you that many cities in texas have a number of thinly veiled gambling houses and the laws are not being enforced.
I think that US citizens should be able to link foreign sites an gamble as they please. If the money or good are drawn from foreign sources and brought into the US, that is legal. If the good are US domestic that may be a problem. If the web sites are registered local then that might also be a problem as the US government can and will take it. The taking does not necessarily limit the ability to gamble.
Also, in case you don't know, the skill thing is a nod to the many irrational christians in texas. They are experts in situational ethics so that, for instance, preventing a the termination of fetus at 4 weeks requires huge amounts of taxpayer funding, but not taxpayer funding is required to prevent the baby from dying at 1 year. Gambling is bad, but if he can fool enough people into thinking that poker is skills it won't hurt their brains, even though most gambling houses will kick you out if you really use skill.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
When you buy an ipod or order a tv from Amazon do you expect that sometimes you'll open the box and find it full of rocks instead?
I admit I hadn't; I had read about something similar some time ago and assume it was the same.
But that only reinforces my point: they're only laundering money "to avoid restrictions," meaning, because it's illegal.
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Once it's legal and regulated at the federal level like he's proposing, the states have no power over it unless they want to face multitudes of costly federal court battles over attempts to regulate interstate commerce.
In that moment when you shoved all in with AK suited, and you get a ridiculous call with 4-3 off, the skill it took to get you to that point is thrown out the window when the flop comes 443.
People run hot and cold sometimes that is true. (Moneymaker ran hot as a nova during the WSOP)
The above quote is a very bad example of why people think poker is luck.
AKs vs. 43o is only a 65% favorite. That is all. Not much is it.
Your a bunch of math guys around here. Here are the numbers. (whips open poker stove)
21,423,686 games 19.485 secs 1,099,496 games/sec
Board:
Dead:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 65.843% 65.56% 00.28% 14045162 60932.00 { AKs }
Hand 1: 34.157% 33.87% 00.28% 7256660 60932.00 { 43o }
thanks, Feltope
The bill would also create a federal regulatory body to oversee the game.
Basically, they just wanted to put their greedy little hands in the business. Unregulated business does not benefit the government and its insatiable need to grow. On this basic principle (and look at the voting record for this specific example) the republicrats and demoblicans entirely agree.
It's exactly the same principle as the mafia's protection racket only they get to write the laws, so they do it legally.
Mind the frickin' laser...
"natural berth control" methods
Is that when the ship isn't given any help beyond being told to breathe?
The rickroll trolls, still better than the goatse trolls
Use your head - berth control is a load of ship. 8-)
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Poker is a game of skill.
Being able to read another players tells etc are skills as well.(good) Businessmen, salesmen, doctors, anyone in customer service have well developed skills in reading other people.
I disagree with the computer thing. A novice player (we would call them a level 1 thinker) would get crushed by a computer I am sure. The computer can be programmed with high knowledge of probabilities etc. and thus always make the right mathematical choice. Against a seasoned player those mathematically right choices will get confused by bluffs, stop-n-goes, pitches, stealing. etc. because they are hard to factor in and as the computer model adapts and updates its internal probabilities and begins to catch the pro the pro can simply switch gears and continue to crush the computer (rinse and repeat). It is not hard to destroy a mathematical poker model.
When they start lumping in crap like blackjack into the equation is when things get really screwy. Blackjack is not poker. (I don't know that they have said otherwise)
The PPA has been trying to get legislation passed for years (since it was banned) for this. All of use that play poker professionally, or semi-professionally have been screaming for protection for this. Legalize it and regulate it so we can play in piece. I don't have a problem paying my taxes and do so. Most players I know don't really give it a second thought they have to pay taxes and they know it. It is the weekend warrior donkey that might not be paying his taxes.
Although it is true that any player no matter their skill level can sit down and win a bunch of money from the best player in the world it won't happen consistently. Almost all of us keep databases of our hands (online play) some are massive. I average ~3000 hands a day last year. That is obviously just over 1 mil. hands. I know exactly what my win rate is and I also know that I "swing" sometimes I have cold times and sometimes I have hot times. It happens. That does not change the fact that the game is a game of skill not luck. Mathematically models don't usually concern themselves with 10, 100, 1000, or even 10000 hands. A decent mathematical model of a player is a min. of about 20k hands. (this is a disputed figure many people feel differently about this) personally I would say 100k hands at any given buy-in level is a good measure of your abilities at that level. Also by that time your numbers will be your numbers and you don't have to worry about calculating your standard deviation etc.
Poker is a game of memory, math (statistics and probabilities), and social skills like reading people. It has not now nor will it ever be and I can't wait for them to turn it back on full power so I can get back to augmenting my income with it.
A Note about them shutting down PokerStars and FullTilt:
PokerStars did the right thing and had all the money in other accounts so the player's money was safe. When the government came knocking they were able to say this is our player's money accounts let us give them their money.
FullTilt did not. They screwed the pooch big time. (after telling us all that the money was separate a while back).
Sorry I rambled on so much.
thanks, Feltope
The online and offline gaming scene is highly corrupt. In countries where it *is* legal, certification agencies have no clue what they're doing. Getting certified is more a matter of money and politics than whether or not you cheat players (which most companies do!).
Online gambling is nearly impossible to regulate. It's way too easy to cheat people without getting caught which is why I believe it should remain illegal.
There is a BIG difference between online poker (as it stands today) and offline poker.
With online poker you dont get ANY of the normal signals (body language etc) that good players use to tell what the other player might be thinking, what their hand might be etc. I did hear though that some sites are looking into using webcam technology to both provide this (i.e. people who are being filmed and shown to other players would give away clues) and to allow verification that a real human being is playing and not a computer.
That said, I DO support this bill and want to see online poker legalized. And I see no reason FullTilt or PokerStars couldn't set up shop in a gambling-friendly locale if that's what it takes to become legal under the new law. (or promise big bucks to a state that's not openly hostile to gambling but doesn't have an established gambling industry to challenge the "upstarts")
Sure an amateur could win at poker against pros over a short sample size. Amateur golf players can also beat professionals at single holes and even rounds, but over the course of the weekend or throughout a year, the pro is going to excel. The same is true in poker. You can argue that poker is higher variance, but you can't argue that it isn't predominantly skill.
I thought.. great! Somebody that understands the way the internet works. (If you make it illegal, people will do it illegally, similar to the war on drugs.) The part about per state regulation was the cherry. Then the last part of the summary made me run for my tin-foil hat! Any government oversight beyond promoting security and assigning names/numbers is a foot in the door towards INTERNET CENSORSHIP in the USA. Like the kind of crap they pull in the East...
It certainly changes the stupidity of blaming either party for it as if the other wouldn't have also done it.
You know, I'm ok with the government regulating gambling. I like knowing the dice are only as loaded as the house admits (i.e. by the design of the game, rather than by fraud).
In the end, though, a highly skilled poker player can still lose against somebody who never played before and sat down just for kicks. A well-trained marathon runner, however, is not going to lose against a couch potato short of an external influence.
That's why it's not obvious to everyone that poker is not a game of chance, and thus it's not obvious to everyone that playing poker with an ante is not gambling.
when this novice wins, what are you referring to? one hand? your marathon runner can trip, fall and lose one leg of that race.
if you pit a pro/expert against a novice poker player, the novice will lose in time. period. Look up how Andy Beal did (which I'd hardly consider a novice)
You're looking at it backwards. The reason so many gambling sites are used for money laundering is because it's illegal. The old meme of "When X is outlawed, only outlaws will do X" applies here.
You had a big example of that, during the prohibition.
Your argument is preposterous... by the same logic the failure to enforce prohibition is justification to decriminalise hard drugs or other abuse-related activities. Just because criminals commit murder does not mean we should legalise it.
You could not be more wrong. You speak of reading tells and bluffing as if they do not represent skill. In a game of chess or similar skill based wargame, or all forms of football with which I am familiar, a key to defense is reading the play is it unfolds. For the attacking side, the ability to mask the intentions of the play furthers the likelihood of a try, goal, or touchdown. The same is true of poker. To this end, you did not mention the ability to understand bets. This goes beyond reading tells. When one places a bet, one creates a control zone. The bet indicates to the table a strength. A player must decipher the legitimacy of the bet, against the size of the pot, the players remaining in the hand, the strength - or potential - of your hand, and the amount of chips each player has. Similarly, the defensive structure of a football side - or defensive positioning of pieces in a wargame - exists not just to protect, but to discourage play from entering an area. As such a control zone is created. Dissuaded from attacking a certain area, the play must shift to another avenue. An avenue the defending side prefers. This is reflected in poker by a bet dissuading - or encouraging through false weakness - a call or raise. There are a great number of people who have made a terrific living by playing poker. In addition, some students play poker to finance their life while studying. You might argue that they are the statistically fortunate. I disagree, they are has skillz. I has skillz. These tremendous abilities allow those who own to win. Luck, fortune, chance, all play their part - as they do in sport, with the changing of a strong wind playing a HUGE part in football. However, the ability to factor in the various winds of fate is a part of any sport. The good tactician, halfback, quaterback, no. 10, or poker player similarly must accommodate and understand this concept if they are to succeed.
You are arguing that when you reduce the game of poker to a game of chance by using a computer then it is a game of chance. It is a game of skill, your ending argument about a marathon runner, how about applying that to a game of chess, a smart novice could defeat a veteran master on their very first game, yet you considered that a game of skill. Your argument is all over the place and you admit it fails in reality against human players.
Golf could be deconstructed the same way where random variables such as wind, orientation of the grass, random imperfections in the ball and clubs dominate over the skill of the player thus making it a game of chance more akin to roulette than poker. Yet this is not so in reality, just like in reality poker is a game of skill.
Someone obviously doesn't know anything about poker.
These sites need to accept bitcoins for transactions
Online poker is legal here in BC,Canada and there has never been a push to make it illegal, offshore or otherwise AFAIK.
http://www.bclc.com/cm/eCasino/landing.htm (This is the BC Lottery Commission's website, eg the regulator.)
"British Columbians currently spend an estimated $87 million each year gambling on approximately 2000 available unregulated offshore internet gambling websites. PlayNow.com will offer online players the option to play casino-style games such as blackjack, roulette, and poker on a secure and regulated website while helping to keep online gaming revenues in British Columbia."
Also one of the channels on Shaw cable frequently shoes the pokerstars.net live tournaments (or maybe it was some other site, but it was live) so it's not like there is any real move against it.
Personally though, I'm someone who easily gets stuck in gambling-addict mode, so I won't go near these sites, even the free-to-play/no-real-money one.
I do see one large loophole, and this problem exists in every form of online gaming (including MMO's and Xbox Live), in that multiple states/countries require being regulated by their own states, thus building virtual fences and making it impossible for players from anywhere around the world from playing in the same instance together. Let's say Nevada,USA and BC,Canada make the same requirements of having to be registered in with their respective regulators, this means that players in their countries can't play together.
So the proposed laws might not go far enough, they would need to have a third party "OK'd regulators" in foreign countries as well. NGCB and BCLC could designate each other as "OK'd" and thus allow players in their regulated areas to play on each others turf. Not on the list, then expect your monies to be seized.
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if it was the banks or credit card companies that pushed for the original ban since online forms of gambling are a source of fraud, particularly money laundering.
"Is there skill involved? Of course."
Yep, you need computer skilled friends, so that you can share an Online Poker table and show each other your hands to drain the other suckers at the table.
I'm a good poker player. Online I've increased my initial buyin by over 100000% until they shut em down with no luckboxing a MTT. Live poker has downfalls I don't like. You cannot mute a racist hatemonger at a poker table, and you can't walk away from the table if it is a tournament. Live does not let you play for low buyins if you're not psyched up for medium play. Live rarely has tournaments and sit and gos. Live has a bigger rake than online. There's a lot of reasons why I like online vs casinos. I'll still play live, yes, with friends for fun. But if I'm at a table of people who aren't my friends, it just isn't fun.
God spoke to me
curse you typos!
If they did what is alledged it's because the law is strange. It made it illegal to transfer money to poker sites but not illegal to play or to withdraw money. If they did launder money it was to get money on the sites to do something that was legal for them to do. It's kinda messed up.
... the professional poker players who, when pitted against a random bunch of other poker players, tend to win far more often than a random selection would dictate. ...
But this is only against such a random selection of other poker players and only when they're human. Pitted against a computer, their results suddenly fall well within a bell curve of chance.
You clearly don't know what you are talking about or you wouldn't make such blatantly false statement.
Nor does it change the stupidity of blaming one party when it obviously was passed with massive support from both parties. Congratulations on completely missing the point.
You're looking at it backwards. The reason so many gambling sites are used for money laundering is because it's illegal. The old meme of "When X is outlawed, only outlaws will do X" applies here.
You had a big example of that, during the prohibition.
Your argument is preposterous... by the same logic the failure to enforce prohibition is justification to decriminalise hard drugs or other abuse-related activities. Just because criminals commit murder does not mean we should legalise it.
We should not legalize murder since there is very real harm that occurs to someone else when a person commits murder.
It is not clear to me that all drugs that are currently illegal in the USA when used in the privacy of your own home by a consenting adult poses any real harm to anyone. Murder and other violent crimes do not have this distinction.
With online poker you dont get ANY of the normal signals (body language etc) that good players use to tell what the other player might be thinking, what their hand might be etc.
To a point, I'll agree; being a person who has played mostly online (though not horribly well), there are ways of figuring people out (betting patterns, how they jabber if they participate in any sort of chat either during or between hands) that serve as fairly rough analogues. These don't translate well to live games in and of themselves, but folks who play live games and dabble online that I've known tend to key in on those things when (naturally) nothing else is available, with slightly decreased returns.
I don't post AC. I like my -1, Flamebaits. Trump/Sheen 2012 on the Batshit Insane ticket!
So is it skill, or is it chance? I'd say it's a little of both, with chance being predominant in the game's actual elements, and skill being predominant in its (human) players.
This presents a bit of a problem as the laws currently are sort of black-and-white. It's either a game of chance or a game of skill with nothing in between.
And yet there is a lot of luck in professional sports. I was just watching a sports and science segment on ESPN. They were looking at how someone leapt up and caught a ball just as it cleared the fence. They then went on to describe how any number of variables could have turned that hit into a home run including temperature and barometer. There is always luck involved, the star player getting sick, getting injured. If it was pure skill no shot would miss and baseball players would bat 1000. I'm curious about this supposed computer that pros can't beat.
The biggest tell of all is betting history. Betting history trumps any physical tell you can see, and is just as available (even more so in fact, you can cache it in a db) via the internet.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
At least he is doing something no other politician is doing....legislating something (albeit imperfect) I want.
You clearly don't know what you are talking about or you wouldn't make such blatantly false statement.
I'm glad someone beat me to it. That statement was just absurd and shows a total ignorance of the subject being discussed, made worse with the condescending "you are all so sadly mistaken and I am now going to tell you how it is" tone.
The ONLY game where computers are a match with the top human players is heads up limit holdem. There is no other poker game where computers would be favoured against a top pro so the statement "pitted against a computer, their results suddenly fall well within a bell curve of chance" is just false.
When I look in my database there is a very strong trend where winrates reduce as the stakes increase. This would indicate that as opponents get tougher, it is harder to beat the game in the long run. This flies in the face of the notion that poker is only a game of chance which would lead to no correlation between opponent skill level and winrates.
If I were playing a cash game I would fist pump if I saw my AK get called by 43. Yes, the flop comes out 443 this time however in the long run (and poker is about the long run, as in tens if not hundreds of thousands of hands if you play seriously online) you will destroy that clown. Yes he wins this game, however over the next 10 times this happens he will lose around 2/3 of the hands, providing a nice profit.
As the number of hands played goes to infinity, the player who makes the best decisions with regards to his odds of winning, the size of the pot etc is going to win. When talking about cashgames it is said that one needs to play on the order of 100k hands (which isn't that much when talking about online poker) to be sure whether his strategy and skill is good enough to win.
Sure, if you play a few tournaments during a lifetime then luck will be a significant factor. If you play every tournament of the WSOP, WPT, EPT every year skill is likely to determine your results.
at Obama's SOTU speech?
The takeaway is, don't go all in with unpaired 6-3 when Joe's at your table.
To his credit; poker on a hand level is largely a game of chance, where on a larger game level it is mostly a game of skill.
You have no control whatsoever on a single hand, but in the long term it becomes a game of bluffs and knowing probabilities.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Gambling laws in the UK, before the idiots in New Labour deregulated, stated that only Cribbage amongst card games was a game of skill, and this was the only game you could *legally* play in a pub for money. To my mind this was a sensible state of affairs.
Of course that never stopped people playing Bridge, Poker, Brag and similar games for money, but any gambling debts generated were not recognised in a court of law.
From the dictionary:
to stake or risk money, or anything of value, on the outcome of something involving chance.
. It is gambling. It is a game of skill. It's both.
by the same logic the failure to enforce prohibition is justification to decriminalise hard drugs or other abuse-related activities.
Surprise...it is.
Why allow the government to keep spending your money on something when they continuously fail to achieve the stated goal and there's no return on investment?
And guess what, decriminalizing the use of hard drugs results in...less prisoners, less drugs users, and an overall reduction in the costs to society as a result of hard drug use.
So yes, losing the "War on Drugs" *is* a good reason to pull out and look for a different approach. It had been *proven* to work. Of course there's no fucking way the "tough on crime" folks will allow it, but that is besides the point.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Your post wouldn't bother me if you hadn't so assuredly made so many factually incorrect statements, while appealing to 'common sense'
But this is only against such a random selection of other poker players and only when they're human. Pitted against a computer, their results suddenly fall well within a bell curve of chance.
This is patently false. To this date there isn't a single poker bot that beats a skilled human player over any statistically significant sample, and not for lack of trying to develop one. Mostly because there isn't an optimal decision tree that isn't directly influenced by the dynamics of a particular game. I'd be more then excited if you'd provide a single example to the contrary.
I'd say it's a little of both, with chance being predominant in the game's actual elements, and skill being predominant in its (human) players.
This right here makes it apparent that you have no understanding of poker. The 'chance' element of poker, which any person with some background in math/statistics would call 'variance', is evenly distributed among the players. What creates a difference in results, i.e profits, over a significant sample, is the 'skill' element. This is to say, that two players of different skill levels and unlimited funds will not have an even result over say 25k of poker hands.
In the end, though, a highly skilled poker player can still lose against somebody who never played before and sat down just for kicks. A well-trained marathon runner, however, is not going to lose against a couch potato short of an external influence.
As I've repeatedly stressed above, poker 'results' are measured over a significant sample size. It is extremely unlikely that a professional would lose to a novice over 350 hands. Not to mention 5k hands.
by the same logic the failure to enforce prohibition is justification to decriminalise hard drugs or other abuse-related activities.
Surprise...it is.
Yes that is a surprise... By your logic we should not have any laws at all, right?
And guess what, decriminalizing the use of hard drugs results in...less prisoners, less drugs users, and an overall reduction in the costs to society as a result of hard drug use. Why allow the government to keep spending your money on something when they continuously fail to achieve the stated goal and there's no return on investment?
There simply are no real-world examples of what you are claiming. But even if there were planets where hard drugs are legal and people decide that because they are legal it's no longer cool to use them; do you seriously suggest that laws should be based on financial viability? Caring for the elderly is not financially viable either, so since you seem to think laws are a waste of money, how bout killing all the old folks? Can you see how ridiculous this line of reasoning is?
legalize it, tax it fools. some people bet the farm on all manner of Wallstreet investments, get into highly leveraged trading, foreign exchange, etc. likewise online poker should be legal, horse racing is, so why not sportsbetting? people do office pools regardless. anyway, if people wanted to use online casinos, who cares? joints like this honor state lottery numbers drawings. http://betslips.com/gameinfo_pick3.aspx http://5dimes.com/lr_payouts.html so someone wants to play pocket change online, big deal! people lose heaps more on bad Wallstreet gambles. cheers!
Real world example: Portugal. All drug use has been decriminalized and addicts are treated for their addiction instead of being put into a prison. Net result: less money spent, lower chances of repetition and a much higher chance of rehabilitation. And yes, overall drug use has in fact slightly dropped.
Another example: soft drug use in the Netherlands is far lower than in the surrounding countries, yet we're the only country where it's legal to buy the stuff(for now).
As for caring for the elderly, nice little strawman. I'm comparing an expensive method that does not work to a cheaper one that does, you're comparing an expensive method that does work to killing old people. Did you learn to debate on the internet by any chance?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Your facts are flawed and your thesis is invalid... so you resort to personal insults. If that is your definition of a debate then, I cheerfully fail to measure up to your standards.
Is Poker a game of chance or a game of skill?
Let's look at it from different angles:
Firstly, is Backgammon a game of chance?
I'd say that in any single game, chance may play a significant role, but in a long sequence of games, it evens out. Similarly so with poker.
Secondly, there was an interesting study:
http://www.cigital.com/resources/gaming/poker/100M-Hand-AnalysisReport.pdf
Quoting:
It seem you are the moron. Poker is a game of skill, not luck. Sure, in 50 hands you could beat Phil Ivey. But in 100.000 hands of PLO I doubt there are more than 1-2 people on the planet who could beat him in.